Beating Burnout || Podcast (Episode 5) || Ishan Shivanand

Welcome everyone to today's 5th episode of our podcast, and we're going to be discussing burnout, the effects of burnout, and how we combat burnout in modern day. Ishanji, I think my first question to you is, what is burnout?

The simplest way to put is emotional exhaustion. When we feel emotionally disconnected, emotionally bankrupt, and emotionally unstable while we are living our life. This emotional instability can take many forms. It can become physical exhaustion. It can be physiological symptoms— headache, gastric problems, constant feeling of being tired, chronic fatigue. It could be emotional symptoms of not feeling fulfilled, not feeling joy derived from activities that should bring you joy, or simply feeling emotionally disconnected from the people that are around us or the objectives of our life. It could also become mental fatigue, whereas we are not able to apply ourselves completely and totally in, in work that would generally give us joy and fulfillment, and we feel a lack of performance, a lack of motivation. And all this summed up together can be called burnout.

About signs and symptoms and talking about physical exhaustion as well as how we're not able to sleep well, or it affects our eating patterns. Many people have a difficult time identifying when they're experiencing increased levels of exhaustion. So what are some signs or symptoms that people can easily spot within not only themselves but with other people around them?

This is a catch-22 situation. If we know ourselves, if we are aware of ourselves, then we will not push ourselves to the level of chronic stress, chronic fatigue, or eventually burnout. It is because maybe somewhere down the line we prioritized everything under the blue sky except us that we are starting to feel these emotions. Because if you are right now here listening about burnout or reading about burnout, then understand this: somewhere you have been affected by burnout. Because otherwise, why aren't you on YouTube looking at pretty kittens doing naughty things? It is because somewhere there is something inside us telling us that this life that we are living, it is not sustainable. This health that we have procrastinated for so long, we must make qualitative, quantifiable actions so that we can bring some massive change in how we approach, perceive, and react to life. If we are starting our day and the first thought in our head is, ah, not again. That means somewhere we have been affected by this chronic stress, because the human experience is supposed to be a cognitively beautiful experience. In Eastern theology, we are taught that All animals are tied down by their set pattern actions, by the behavior that is encoded in their DNA. We are bound by the laws of species. It is only the human being that has the ability to set himself free through the power, through the gift of his awareness in his mind. A human being has the ability to play God, invent, create, feel, experience thoughts, emotions that none of the species around him are privy to experiencing. A gorilla can look at Michelangelo and not feel anything, but a human being has the ability to be moved Now imagine not being able to live your life as a human being, completely disconnected from the emotional joy, wonder, curiosity, and amazement that you deserve to feel, something that is your birthright as being born as a Homo sapiens, as the species in which we are in. And how we can know we are burnt out? We are completely disconnected from that human experience. We feel like we are pushing ourselves from one situation to another, from one relationship to another. The easiest way I can tell you is Imagine yourself pushing a truck up a hill. It is not going to be easy. And I tell you this is because how you will feel pushing up that truck up the hill is how you feel when you are burnt out. Each morning you will look at the truck, you'll be like, not again, I have to push. I feel like Atlas carrying the weight on my shoulders. And I tell you in terms of feelings is because many times in early stages, burnout is not quantifiable. How will you quantify headache? How will you quantify chronic fatigue? You will go, you will tell somebody, oh, I feel a chronic fatigue, a chronic lack of motivation. They're going to say, eat better, try to sleep. Of course I'm trying to sleep. Sleep eludes me. Of course, I'm trying to eat better, but there is something inside me that is not letting the best of the world reach my heart. And that is that state of exhaustion, that feeling which we can sum up as burnout. So I would say to people, Be aware of your feelings, be aware of your emotions. And to be aware of your feelings and emotions, you need to know yourself. To know yourself, you need to spend time with yourself. And spending time of yourself is not sitting in front of the television or going to the gym and pushing your body to do various athletics. Because one of the symptoms of chronic burnout is substance abuse. And substance abuse can be using any form of substances, may it be information, may it be non-substance abuse, may it be alcohol, to sort of numbing yourself. And when I say spend time with yourself, it means Leave out all the distractions, all the gadgets, and try to be aware of your body. Try to be aware of your breath. Try to be aware of your thoughts, no matter how difficult that may be, because that awareness will lead to realizations. And that realization may probably help you change your life and maybe even save your life. So my answer would be to first know thyself, and that is most important.

When we understand ourselves and really take the time to know ourselves, as we've talked about in our previous episodes, we gain a large sense of enlightenment and also just feels like a weight has lifted off of our chest that's been like how you discussed putting a lot of substance or a lot of pain onto ourselves. We talk about the state of the world and so many things that happen that affect us that lead to burnout, but many people wonder why do we experience burnout so frequently in this generation?

Emotional connection. We need an emotional core. If you do not have that emotional core, how will we be strong? You have to understand, this human body is very resilient. Alexander the Great marched all the way from Macedonia to India. He was not exhausted. His army was. His army felt burnt out, but not him. He was ready to march all the way through the Deccan and then probably get on a boat and go back to Macedonia. But he found motivation. A mother will find motivation to take care of her children while she is doing a job provided there is an emotional core, because that emotional core gives you that feedback, that, that payment that is most important, that fulfillment whenever we are doing any activity. I wrote an article once, and that article was because I was in Mauritius and I was part of the education system, and I was in a meeting in which the teachers and the students and the parents were sitting, and the parents were trying to put the blame of the teacher— of the student's failure on the teachers, and the teachers were trying to put the blame of the student on the parents. And the parents said that, see, we, we, we are not with our children all the time. We send them to you. And 8 hours a day the child is with you, then we are working, and then probably 2 hours we spend with a child. Of course, we are not to blame, you are to blame. And then the teacher says, the child is just few hours a day with us in school, then what he does in his life, we don't know. In his vacations, what he does, we don't know. So if he's failing, you are to blame. And that child in that moment was an orphan. And I wrote the article called A World Full of Orphans. Why we do not have an emotional core today? Because who is giving that emotional core to the child? Today I see a baby cries, the first thing we do is we give him a cell phone. A mother is sitting with her friends in the morning having some breakfast, talking nice, nice things, and the child is crying. Who wants to Shut the child up with reason and thoughts and talk. Simple. Let ChuChu TV do the honors. Let Dave and Eva do the honors. Let Masha and Bear do the honors. And the child is simply given this, this thing that is so distracting, all lights and glitters and sounds, and the child just numbs himself like an heroin addict being given a dopamine fix. So what is the child learning? Whenever there is any form of emotional instability, look for a dopamine fix, and that will somehow numb you and for that time being make the chill— the, the pain go away. And the child lives his life like that. Because earlier times, why so much burnout did not exist? Because we spend time making that emotional core. It could be made through family, it could be made through long-lasting friendships, it could be made through religion, because religion also was this place of community where you would go, you would meet your neighbor, you would interact with your neighbor, you would love your neighbor. So there was this form of attachment to that community. Today, people without emotional core live in complete isolation. I was watching a show in America. It was about COVID and this and that, and about preppers who prep for the time when shit will hit the fan and things will go bad. And the guy is saying, if things go bad, I will eat my neighbor. And I'm thinking, what? That is his first response to when things go wrong? Eat your neighbor? Not just, I will eat my neighbor's tomato, I will eat my neighbor's broccoli. No, straight away, I will eat my neighbor and feed him to my children. And I'm thinking, what kind of world? When forget about community attachment, But in our isolation, we are fantasizing when things will go bad, we will eat the neighbor. So the most important thing is what are we doing to develop that emotional core? If we want to actually live a life that complements this human experience, We must have that connection, that stability, that foundation, that ability to love, that ability to create value for the things that we do, even our job. So many children, I ask them, do you like what you do? They said no, we are doing just so that we can survive. There is no fulfillment doing the job. And they are telling me that this job we are doing, 10 years AI will take over. So what's the point of valuing the job? Because our employers don't value us, so we do the bare minimum that is expected. We are paid the bare minimum that is necessary, and that's about it. So imagine investing so much of your life in doing things that has no emotional trigger. Then of course burnout will happen. Emotion is energy in motion. Emotion is life. If we find ways to anchor our emotions, then that emotion will give us strength and power and the ability to push ourselves in a healthy manner. But take away that emotion, take away that connection, and what will happen to us is what happens to a tree if you kill its roots. It may look beautiful today, but it will wither and die sooner or later. Yes.

I like the way you described the tree because it's the same as how we nurture ourselves. We have to give it water, sunlight, connection. That's the same Aarti Samani Samani uses to focus on ourselves.

And the logo of our podcast is a tree.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly right. We've talked about in previous episodes, we've talked about how there are many ways to practice self-love and practice nurturing our tree when going through tough times. One thing that people always ask is, how can I, like, say, sit here and say this to myself, that I deserve this and I deserve self-love? What phrases or actions can we use to be kinder to ourselves?

You must learn to celebrate things. Celebrate the little things. The little things is where the life is going to be. I was talking to a mother right now, and her son was giving a taekwondo belt test, and he won. He got promoted, but the mother was unhappy because the son was the weakest in the class. So the mother was comparing the son to all the other students, and she was feeling bad. Because I'm sure she must be thinking of what other mothers are thinking, and every mother wants her child to be like a Shobhuni. And she's complaining to me, she's coming to me, and she's saying that, oh, I have this mental health issue and my son is not good enough in the class. And I'm saying, why are you comparing your son to everybody else? Why are you not comparing your son, with your son. Because I worked with this woman for a long time, and her son was very awkward. He did not have great motor skills, and he worked very hard on himself to reach where he was able to do what he could, to stand where he is standing. And the beauty is the son was proud of himself. The son achieved something without any help. He went out there, he showed up, he put as much effort as he could, and he got the belt. And mind you, mind you, the son is 7 years old. The son is 7 years old, and the mother is so unhappy that he's not as good as other people. And we spend our life comparing ourselves with, with others around us, and we do not let ourselves celebrate the victories that we achieve through the hard work that we have put, because victories don't come easy in this world of people upon people. It is very hard to achieve the things that we do. If we learn to celebrate them, then we will learn to be kind to ourselves, because celebrating our victories is a form of appreciation, gratitude. And we must find out healthy ways of celebrating, you know, of gratitude that we give to ourselves. This is one. Second thing to be kind to yourself is try to— and as I said, I, I'll sound like a broken record— meditate. Spend time with yourself, spend time with your breath, and do not look at meditation as an Olympic sport. Because just like people do sports, they are thinking, oh, I'll get gold medal. People who are doing meditation, I don't know what expectation they'll have, that they'll start flying and they'll become Doctor Strange and they'll become enlightened and they'll fart rainbows and they'll fly on unicorns. Meditation doesn't need to be that complex or that wondrous of an achievement. Meditation could be something as simple as finding silence and balance within yourself. Something as simple as closing your eyes, focusing on your breath, or focusing on any mantra of your choosing, or trying to practice gratitude— that is also a very powerful form of meditation— trying to practice love compassion, and gratitude. These things that I am saying— learning to celebrate, learning to meditate— they will help you in the long run. And another thing that I would recommend to people is focused resilience training. So something like the Yoga of Immortals. Yoga of Immortals is these modalities that I developed because I spent 20 years of my life in the monastery and I was exposed to so much knowledge and information. And then when I started to work in the world, many times young people would come to me in a state of crisis. And they would say, give us something. Now, I can't sit with them and give them 20 years of experience and practice. I must give them something that is relevant to them, relevant to the issues that they are facing, something that is unique to their situation. So then I spend a lot of time. I spend almost 5 years of my life honing a protocol, a system that people, especially the youth, could practice. And through that practice, they would develop a very specific, certain skill set that would deal them— teach them how to deal with their stress, with their anxiety, that will teach them how to find balance and peace, that will teach them to become resilience. Many times the problem happens is we treat meditation as if it is a firefighting tool. We should bring it into our life as a form of behavioral modification, as a lifestyle disorder prevention, not just treatment. And that would mean, that would look like practicing 15 minutes every day a technique like Yoga of Immortals that is specifically helping me create mental, emotional, and physiological resilience. If you can do this, celebrate. The small wins, compassion to the self by meditating, and resilience training through techniques like YOI, then I am sure this will be a form of self-love and kindness that will help you overcome burnout.

Talked about, um, sharing how disorders, and people classify burnout as a disorder and can experience all of these difficult things. And an example I like to share frequently is how Sweden and other Nordic countries have highlighted and acknowledged the realities of burnout and classifying it in medical dictionaries and within society, within the workplace. Many workplaces have adopted the method of ensuring a work-life balance and prioritizing the safety and the wellbeing of their workers. Something that this makes me think about is how can communities and organizations and even schools help support our youth to deal with burnout? And like you said, talking about more prevention than treatment.

A lot of the companies are, are kind till they can be, and then they are not. Case in point, COVID. When COVID happened, everybody was being very kind to their employees. Work from home, here's a few thousand dollars, buy some technology to work from home. Extra bonus, etc., etc. And when COVID finished and the economy became uncertain and the shareholders demanded profit, then immediately, you know, fire half the staff and exasperate the problem of burnout. People like to give examples of Nordic countries. Yes, very nice, very good, but we are talking about countries that have less population, a good economy, good disposable income to invest upon that population. But eventually, sometimes situations are different, and in a country like India where you have millions of people applying for 1,000 job vacancies. How would you want to create a culture of support when it is already a culture of cutthroat? Because 1 million people applying for 1,000 job vacancy. Things become competitive quite fast. In a perfect world, of course, I would want at least some legislature. And again, I am saying legislature. I can't expect companies to act out of the kindness of their heart because I have seen companies, until and unless legislature is created, try to milk the cow till its death, so to speak. You know, maybe the coal mining companies of the earlier 19th century, they would use kids. They used because they could, for as long as they could. Job safety happens when legislature puts an impact, a weight on the capitalistic companies that, hey, you can't do this anymore. And that is where governance comes into play. That is where, um, a redefinition of what it means to be successful comes into play. That is where a whole shift in the society must happen. That is where faith must come back in society. Family must come back in society. Grounding when it comes to emotional stability and meditative nature must come back in society. Because if we say that, oh, make good legislature, and in that legislature we want a good work-life balance, then a work-life balance would mean that everybody has what they require what they need. But then what happens to society that is just so very greedy and has not found its emotional core, and it only gets its fulfillment from the hustle culture? And a value of a person is not by what he can create, but how much trinkets he can possess. So everybody must work together. Good governance comes, but I must become a good citizen. I must have good civic sense, and that civic sense comes from knowing my own self setting up my own priorities. Because if we talk about Nordic countries, there the education system is such, the culture is such. I remember talking to a girl, she was from one of the Nordic countries, and she was into healthcare, and she was living a good life. She had enough, and I told her that, why do not you come to America? You are so talented and there is a requirement of healthcare workers and there you will have so much scope of growing. She said, why would I want to come to that cutthroat place and work 20 hours a day? I said, just, you know, work a little bit right now so you can save up and retire later and enjoy life. She said, I'm enjoying life as much as I want to. I don't need any more. I'm happy with what I have. I have good mountain to climb, good river to swim. I have enough healthcare, enough good food, good things to eat. So, so I know my employer has this much requirement of me, and I have this much requirement of the employer, and we fulfill each other. And then that's it. Then we cap. So that person was so in tune with herself that, that she could create then her priorities, and those priorities are conveyed to legislature, and then that legislature makes sure that each and every single company is following a set pattern and rule. The trouble happens when the company influences the legislature, which influences the young person who is still trying to understand what his priorities are. And then the companies can create legislature that can kill the child. So it has to be reversed, but then it has to start from within. Change has to come from within. Balance has to come from within. Awareness has to come from within, because then you will be able to work with the healthcare workers to create that data, then to influence the government, and then the government makes those rules. And that is most important. But if I say that institutions have to put their best foot forward and we must have to rely on the kindness of institution, trust me, institutions are not kind. We have seen it. They are worried about their bottom lines, their profits. As simple as that. And I know this because I work in healthcare, mental health. Pre-COVID, there was so much demand mental health, do this, do that. During COVID there was so much demand, mental health, do this, do that. And when the economy went up and down, now, now nobody wants to work with mental health professionals. They say, no, do it in your own time, not in the company's time. In company's time, you make us money, then we can refer you to the mental health experts, or we will give you incentive to download an app and do meditation. But otherwise, nothing doing. Figure it out.

So yes, when you and I were talking, when— before we started recording, you talked about how you were feeling tired and you were feeling burned out. So what are some ways that you would practice dealing with burnout?

My burnout was, uh, physiological because, uh, I had to take a session early in the morning, 4 AM, and I had to go to a place that is far away from my home, and I had to sit in a chair that had no cushion. I'm still sitting on it and it is so hard on my ass. So, so my bum, physiologically, I, I felt a bit tired, but I won't call it burnt out because that would be undermining people who are actually going through burnout. But yes, when I know physiologically I will have to require more from my body, then I spend a little bit more TLC care on my body. So before I know an event like this has to happen, I make sure of eating the correct diet, light diet, so that my body is able to perform. I make sure that when I'm getting into a time frame where I'll be expected to work 15 hours a day, I, I get enough rest and I do lots of breathwork and I box. So I don't box before I have to do this events. I, I focus on the breathwork. I focus on exercises like yoga. Which, which will really help me. And now that I have been sitting for almost 12 hours, I will again spend some time on doing yogic asanas that can help me relax my muscles in a much better manner. I will have some protein-rich light food that will be high in roughage so that my body remains in an optimum system. And before I sleep, I will do lots of breathwork again so that I can flush out any and all toxins— mental, emotional, and physiological— that I may have created. So it's about preparation with me, and after preparation, it is about having a good system set in place that helps me heal my body. So preparation and revitalization, that, that helps me because I know this body is mine and I must be kind to it if I want to make it perform. Because even if I am going to achieve success in life, I would enjoy that success with this body. It is so very hard when we have everything in life and we don't have health, may it be physical or mental. So that preparation and that revitalization is a very, very important part of what I do. And sometimes I do understand that Life can be extremely hectic and demanding, and it is at that time I try to focus on, on the main quest. Today I was taking a session and I was talking to them that when I was young, when I was a kid, video games were very easy. You know, they were like Mario or Contra. There were 2D video games and you just had to go ahead and it was simple. There were not a lot of challenges because What you had in front of you, Bowser, that was the challenge and you had to overcome that. So it's simple, there is the challenge, figure it out, go. Slowly the video games became very complex, open world, you could go anywhere. So now you had to figure out where you have to go. And then they became much more challenging because then they started to give this concept of side quests. So earlier video games, you could just go straight, there is only one quest.

Finish it.

Now in the video game, there is a main quest and there are these hundreds and hundreds of side quests. So what a person, a gamer, does is he just gets lost in the side quest for hundreds and hundreds of hours and he forgets about the main quest. So when life is becoming very tense for me, I make sure I do not indulge in any unnecessary side quest and my eyes is on the prize. I'm just going forward with my main quest. And when I know I have a little bit more time, then sometimes I do indulge in a few side quests as well. And it's, it's so very interesting how we are not kind to ourselves by focusing on the main quest. I'll give you another example. I was doing this big meditation session before we are talking, and there was this cricket match apparently that was happening, India versus somebody I don't know who. And people who are doing this meditation session, who have, you know, paid to be part of this meditation session, who want to do this meditation session, are doing this meditation session, but at the same time, half of their eyes looking at the cricket match, you know, side quest, forgetting the main quest, side quest, the cricket match. And then I'm saying, full breath in, full breath out, full breath in, and then go, yay, we won the cricket match! And I'm saying, "What? You won the cricket match?" "No, I did not win. Somebody won." And I am looking at them and I am thinking, "So many side quests. Of course you are burnt out." We have enough energy and resources to somehow finish our main quest and a few side quests. But if all your energy goes into every single random tidbit side quest that comes your way, you're going to kill yourself. So I try my level best when going gets tough, when my butt starts to pain, focus on the main quest. And for that, I don't know if I talked about it in the previous podcast, I write this thing called the golden book. Every single day before I sleep in the nighttime, I have this book We call it the golden book, and I write in it what do I want in my life, what is my main quest, what am I here to do, just so that I can remind myself what my main quest is. And that's how I, I live happily.

Thank you so much, Ashanti, for taking the time out to share today, and also just give more reality and experience as to what you go through and how you do it. And I love the analogy of the side quest because I think a lot of the times we go off on so many side quests, we want to experience so much of the world that we want to go off and see what else is there without really taking the time to realize if we have the energy and the space to do that for ourselves. So thank you for taking the time out to share about this today.

Perfect. Thank you so very much.

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